April 30, 2024

What's a "Great Solution" you ask? According to Building Design + Construction (BD+C), it's any idea, innovation, or solution related to either the planning, design, construction, or operation/maintenance of a building project, or AEC firm operations.

It could be a creative amenity or design solution, a novel construction method, first-of-its-kind technology application, new project financing approach, engineering solution, new building type, or a novel approach to project collaboration or delivery.  

The Great Solutions featured in this year’s roundup have one or more of the following characteristics:
- Offers a good return on investment (ROI)
- Has proven positive results from the field/projects
- Benefits the building occupants (health, wellness, comfort, affordability, convenience, etc.)
- Benefits the client/owner (faster lease-up, helped secure financing, compressed schedule, saved $$)
- Is a first-of-its-kind concept/solution
- Can benefit the wider construction/design/development market

We’re proud to announce that our FOScore® TCO Module — a transparent, holistic, and efficient approach to asset management — has made this esteemed “top 40 biggest innovations” list!

Here at FOS of CannonDesign, we understand the value of Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs) and their role in strategic planning for our clients. That's why we developed the FOScore® Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) module — a first-of-its-kind tool to provide facility management teams with the ability to understand the total cost of ownership of assets over a 50-year outlook, giving our clients a dynamic solution that can be used to keep facility data up to date and inform tactical decision making.

Our primary software, FOScore®, enables both our in-house assessment teams as well as our clients (including building owners, architects, engineers, and property managers) to document a current state of understanding of building conditions. With the ability to report, strategize, and plan capital improvements, FOScore® provides robust visualizations of data sets that empower our clients to further advance infrastructure goals. Quite simply, the FOScore® platform helps understand, advocate, and prepare you for the future in the challenging arena of asset stewardship.

With our new TCO module, “first costs” and “known needs” are gathered from the FOScore® asset module. The TCO Module is powerful yet flexible; default values can be set at the module and portfolio/site/building type levels, while asset-specific values can be entered for one-time or yearly recurring costs (this is a tiered structure). Our clients determine what level of detail is appropriate for their teams to get the best return on investment in data collection and analysis. In addition to interactive data grids that can be exported, interactive visuals are available to further illustrate the total cost of ownership over time.

The TCO module is especially relevant to higher education institutions, who face significant cyclical capital investment needs throughout the life of their facilities, in addition to often expanding deferred maintenance backlogs. Combined with ongoing scheduling and space needs, balancing new construction and investments in existing infrastructure represents a significant challenge. FOS recently worked with the Ohio State University to improve the long-term understanding of facility renewal and deferred maintenance needs by implementing process enhancements and integrating existing software platforms with the robust TCO module. For this project, we customized our current comprehensive renewal and deferred maintenance (RDM) modelling software application, allowing us to tailor a robust TCO program for all assets managed by the institution. Our team assisted in the implementation of a detailed FCA program that will populate the dataset driving the RDM and TCO tools - a foundational element of long-term physical asset management strategies. Our goals included refining facility cost models to the individual-element level leveraging space management and BIM data, enhancing the FCA process, and creating a facilities TCO model. The resulting product allows this institution to predict capital investment plan outcomes and intelligently target, prioritize, and optimize hundreds of millions of dollars of annual spending.

Making smart decisions for your facilities should be centered on data-driven insights. The FOScore® TCO Module helps organizations gather and analyze facility data to make informed choices – all in the palm of their hand.